into and out of and into the void again
i’m tired, so bed is calling, but first, here’s a quick blitz through the past couple days:
the last day of the conference (thursday) was the best yet, in many ways. we ran design club all day, cranking out flipchart sheet after flipchart sheet of sketches and getting a lot of positive attention from passersby. we were exploring the area of social networking at the conference, and both an enthusiastic ixDa member and the conference chair for next year urged us to write up our findings and ideas.
we didn’t get quite as far into an actual prototype as we originally hoped, but we got a lot of good work done, and had a lot of fun. it was a good feeling, and a nice way to wrap up the week. more there soon, i’d expect.
in terms of official events, i saw the best presentation that i’ve seen yet, and it was by a georgia tech student who interned with google last year. something about the fact that she kicked so much ass just struck me as really awesome. i was excited about our generation of budding practitioners, i guess, and i got a warm fuzzy for the goog.
i also really enjoyed the closing plenary, which was given by scott mccloud, who i already knew that i liked. he was an excellent speaker. really funny and personable, with illustrative, engaging, and nearly textless slides. he talked about the evolution of comics in the digital age, and for the second year running i was impressed with chi for bringing in a thought-provoking closing speaker whose relationship to hci is not immediately clear.
meanwhile, over in sv-land, tiffanie was the day captain and she was awesome.
yay tiffanie!
after everything wrapped up at the conference center and we had a little nap, we had the final sv party, which was free dinner (pasta and shellfish aGain?!), free drinks (woohoo!), and what turned out to be a pretty darn good dj. quite a crowd of us danced until they kicked us out, which was awesome. i joined tiffanie, brian, jonathan, some folks from intel, and some other svs whose names i cannot recount in a journey to another bar after that, and so we finally tumbled back to the hotel about 4, which is quite respectable.
tonight, i am sacrificing a bit of that respectability because i opted for a return to the hotel after dinner rather than a last, ostensibly low key visit to the pub, but i’m really feeling the “i need a bit of solo time” thang, and i want to get up in the morning to seek crepes in old montreal for breakfast and visit notre dame before we leave.
so i’d better turn in, to help those goals along.
while we’re on the subject of goals, i’ll tell you that we also need to procure maple syrup and ice wine, and then we should be all set, since today i got socks with moose on them and a coaster that doubles as a matchbox, so we can check those off the list.
phew.
then back to vermont we go, into the air we rise, and into capstone madness i descend…